Since the advent of the Internet, many forms of messaging services and applications have been developed to permit users to send and receive electronic messages to each other. One such messaging service is email. An email message is composed by a user on a client messaging device that is coupled to a network such as the Internet. The message is addressed in some way to one or more users, who are able to receive and display the message content on their respective messaging devices, also coupled to the network. The messages are often processed by a server device through which the messages are processed and stored for retrieval by the recipient users as email messages. The messages persist and can be retrieved and responses be made at the recipients' leisure, and thus the response does not have the immediacy of in-person communications.
Text messaging through SMS and MMS services by wireless telephones provide a bit more immediacy in the communications they facilitate, as the messages are delivered directly to the user's messaging devices and thus signing into a server and retrieval of messages from a server are not required. Further, the arrival of SMS and MMS messages are often announced with an audible alert and can be displayed easily upon their receipt.
Still, even these types of messages lack the immediacy of in-person communication. For example, email and SMS/MMS communications are direct, closed, and intentional. Put another way, when one employs these messaging services, one already has a reason for sending the message, the message is direct in that the person(s) intended as recipient(s) are already purposefully contemplated, and the communications are conducted in a closed manner (i.e. no other contacts or friends are able to observe the that the communication is taking place). Thus, there's no opportunity for a spontaneous communication to occur as result, as might happen in a public group setting such as a party, or in a “village square” type of social gathering.
For closed messaging systems, there is no indication to a user that the user's contacts are in fact available for conversation, or with whom they are conversing. Thus, a person may not be motivated or inspired to initiate a conversational type communication with such friends in the manner one might be if one were in a social gathering where those friends can be observed in communication directly. Moreover, while MMS does support broadcasting of texts to multiple users, this type of conversation is also set up purposefully and is typically directed to a particular group of users such as a study group, an employee group, etc. Again, there is no indication that any of the members of the group are available for conversation at any given time, and other contacts of the participants in a text chat are not aware of the group when present and chatting. Thus, the spontaneity of live conversation is still not motivated in the same way that it is in a group social setting.
Various social media web sites have evolved to add more of a social context to the online networked communications experience. Web sites such as Facebook seek to promote social interactions between friends through the posting of messages on the timeline's of each of member. Friends can also send each other messages and when those friends are online, those conversations can proceed much like an SMS or MMS text exchange. Facebook does provide a listing of a user's friends who are currently signed in to Facebook, but provides no indication as to whether they are actually active (that they walked away from their phone or computer while still signed in), with whom are they communicating, and what in types of communication activities are they currently engaged.
Moreover, while Facebook and other similar web sites provide suggestions for adding friends or contacts, and provide a list of friends of friends, this technique does not compel one to seek a connection with those associate friends or contacts in the same way in which one would be compelled to do so by the immediacy of observing those associates in active communication with one's own friends.